Winterstrike (37 page)

‘Hello, Essegui,’ she said, without surprise.

‘Has Alleghetta spoken to you yet?’

‘Not today.’ Her pasty face wore a look of bland enquiry. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘Yes, you could say that. Can I come inside? It’s cold out.’

The majike opened the door a little wider. ‘Come in.’

Alleghetta had said that it was a laboratory, but the room in which I found myself had no banks of equipment, no haunt-ranks. It looked more like an ordinary parlour.

‘Sit down,’ Gennera said. I did so, on an overstuffed chair; it was still too chilly to remove my coat.

‘She’s changed,’ I said. It seemed to me that we were beyond secrets.

The majike leaned forward in her seat, bending at the waist like a doll. There was a bright and fevered interest in her face. ‘Leretui, you mean? How? Tell me.’

So I did and she listened, avid. ‘But this is marvellous,’ she said when I’d finished. ‘I must come back with you. No one’s seen this process before – it will
make scientific history!’

‘If you think you can tell anyone about it.’ But from the smugness in her expression, I thought there would be plenty in the Matriarchy who would be just as fascinated as she.
‘You’ll have to take charge of her,’ I added. ‘Who knows what she’ll do if she’s left where she is?’

‘It might not be possible to move her by now,’ the majike said. ‘In the beginning – maybe.’

‘So you
do
have some idea of what’s happening to her.’

Gennera sighed, more out of frustration than any other emotion. ‘There are some very old records, dating from the Age of Children. Incomplete, some barely legible. A handful, nothing
more,’

‘But enough for you to use, eh?’

She nodded. ‘Enough for us to
re-create
.’ She leaned over again and clasped my hand. Her fingers felt cold and greasy around my wrist. ‘Your family is part of a great
process, Essegui.’

And you owe it to me, for bringing her back.
‘You owe me my soul,’ I said. The coldness spread from her fingers until a shiver ran through me. ‘What will you use her
for?’ I went on.
When she's fully changed.
I didn’t expect her to tell me, but instead, she stood up.

‘Come with me.’

I followed her through the long parlour and out onto a snow-covered veranda. She took me down the length of the house and through a set of double doors. It looked like an ordinary panelled room,
furnished with carved chests and cabinets, but the touch of haunt-tech set my teeth on edge as soon as I stepped through the door, a blacklight hum which touched the empty pieces of my soul like
prodding the hollow of a missing tooth.

Behind a panel of reinforced glass in one of the cabinets at the far end of the room stood a jar. It was dimly lit, but I could see that the glass was itself held by a force field. Inside the
jar, something black writhed. We stood in front of it, in silence. It was sinuous, with a tapering tail. It had little black eyes. It was perhaps a foot in length.

‘Embryo?’ I asked.

‘One of the few that survived.’

‘What happened to the others?’

But the majike just smiled. ‘Little sisters . . .’

‘So will you bring Leretui back here?’

We’ll have to think about that. I told you, it could be damaging.’

You do know I’m the heir to Calmaretto?’ I said. The majike looked at me directly for the first time since she’d imposed the geise.

Your mothers aren’t old. And there’s still young Canteley.’ And I still have a fragment of you, her look said.

‘Who idolizes Leretui. Who’s not entirely stable.’ It might not be true and I knew I was betraying her, but I had to try. ‘And my mothers aren’t young, either.
Neither are you. Your own successors might need . . . support. We do support the Matriarchy, you see. Especially when Alleghetta joins the council.’

‘Let’s go and see Leretui, shall we?’ It wasn’t a suggestion, nor even a concession, but I felt as though I’d gained a small victory all the same. When we went
outside again, through the frozen garden and the door in the wall, there was a vehicle waiting, as white as the snow itself. The majike, bundled in her garments, crawled into the back seat and I
followed. Inside the car it was stiflingly hot, smelling of leather and secrets.

‘Calmaretto,’ Gennera said, and the car sped off through the silent streets. It was by now early afternoon and the usual crowds that clustered around the fast-food braziers were much
diminished. We swung past the wall of the Matriarchy and I wondered whether Alleghetta was still inside, or whether she’d gone home. I checked the antiscribe, but there were no messages. As
we pulled up at the back of the mansion, I looked fearfully up at the house as though our secrets might even now be spilling out of its windows, but Calmaretto was as closed and shuttered as ever.
The majike was looking at me.

‘Just wondering,’ I said. She didn’t say anything. She touched the seat panel in front of her and the car slowed to a halt. We got out. It seemed to have become much colder,
but maybe it was just the contrast with the car. Thea bustled out of the parlour as we came into the hall.

‘Ghetta still isn’t home, I don’t know what can have become of her, I—’

We’re at war, after all,’ the majike said, removing her gloves. ‘Where’s Leretui?’

‘Upstairs, where else?’ The whites of Thea’s eyes were showing, like a nervous animal.

‘Show me,’ Gennera said.

I didn’t want to go upstairs, didn’t want to see what Leretui had become. I wanted to be far away from here, and simultaneously never to leave the house again. Hiding in the winter
garden, sometimes a childhood option, was beginning to seem highly appealing. But I went up the stairs all the same, conscious of the majike wheezing at my heels.

As we approached Leretui’s room, the door began to alter before my eyes, changing dimension, now huge, the doorway to galaxies, and now tiny as a mouse’s door. The majike’s
voice spoke in my ear.

‘They generate illusion. Ignore it.’

Easy to say. I tried to put one foot in front of the other, but there was a moment when the whole floor seemed as though it was falling away from me, sliding down into a great red desert. I
screamed and stumbled. Gennera caught my arm, but when I glanced at her face it was pale and damp.

‘Not so easy for you, either, is it?’

‘I didn’t say it would be easy. But isn’t it interesting? So new, and already this is what she can do!’

‘I hope you’ve some way of counteracting this,’ I said.

‘Possibly.’

Thea hadn’t come with us, I realized, and I wondered why. Possibly she was afraid, of Leretui or of consequences.

‘Open the door,’ the majike said. I reached out and took hold of the handle, then jerked my hand back. The handle was red-hot. I looked down at my palm but no burn mark was
there.

‘Illusion,’ Gennera said firmly.

‘You
do it, then,’ I snapped. But she hesitated, and in the end I reached out and snatched open the door.

Inside it was quite dark, though on my previous visit I’d noticed that Leretui hadn’t drawn the curtains. The darkness wasn’t natural. It was streaked with red, as if bloody,
and silver shapes shot and swam within it.

‘Leretui?’ I said. My voice was muffled: I felt that the darkness had eaten it.

‘Where is she?’ the majike said, briskly.

‘You tell me. She’s in there somewhere.’ My eyes were adjusting a little and within the swirling black I could see a pool of greater shadow, a silhouette outlined on the dark.
It was moving, undulating like weed under water, and quite silent. Something that could have been a head, sleek and oval and wan, rose up and I knew we were being watched.

‘Get out,’ the majike said. We fell through the door and I banged it shut behind us.

‘There’s nothing left,’ I said. Gennera looked more shaken than I’d expected: perhaps she hadn’t quite realized what her experiment would become, after all.

‘What’s going on?’ I turned to see Alleghetta, still in her long outdoor coat and fur hat, striding down the corridor. It was, I thought, a fairly rhetorical question by
now.

TWENTY-NINE

Clinging to the iron struts of the tower, I watched as the demothea climbed. It did so swiftly, hand over hand, its tentacles writhing around it. Beyond the tower hovered the
orthocopter, with Evishu standing in the open hatch. Using the net might be impossible, but I had the stunner and as soon as the demothea came within range, I planned to use it. I was keeping a
careful eye on the water below the tower, just in case the swarm I’d seen in the cellar had decided to come after their fleeing sister, but there was only a tidal churn. Given their amphibian
nature, I thought I’d have seen them if they were there. Unless there were tunnels under the tower. Unless . . . You had to consider such possibilities, but they were still capable of driving
you mad.

‘Be careful,’ the Library said cheerfully, appearing on the strut beside me.

‘Oh, you’re back, are you?’

The Library pointed to the clambering thing below me. ‘It’s down there. Are you ready for it?’

‘I’ve no idea. Let’s hope so. Otherwise that device that projects you will be lost in Earth’s waters for ever.’

The Library shrugged. ‘I’ll be a sea ghost, then. Could be peaceful.’

‘Could be dull.’ I straightened up. The demothea was about twenty feet below, within whip-tip range. I swung the stunner down and fired.

The weapon didn’t behave as I’d expected. It cast a crackling web of light down through the struts of the tower and the stinging recoil through the palm of my hand nearly made me
drop it. The demothea had flung itself backwards as soon as it saw what I was doing, and it now hung upside down from a lower strut by a tentacle, drawing itself in like a squid. I cursed, jumping
down to one of the struts below and firing as soon as I landed.

This time the whip-tip shot past my ear; it was longer than I’d thought. But the impact of the web through the strut the demothea clung to had knocked it off again: we were going back down
the tower. I heard the hum of the orthocopter, turning, and hoped the kappa had a back-up plan. The waters seethed below.

‘All right,’ I said aloud. ‘You want me, then come and get me.’ Chasing the demothea hadn’t worked well, so let’s see where subterfuge got me. I started
climbing back up the tower as quickly as I could, a little panicky, as if the failure of the stun gun to secure my prey had unnerved me. The demothea came after, moving as fast as I did, but
keeping its distance in case I turned and fired again. I did not. Instead, I climbed higher and higher, until the city itself broke through the mist and I was up into blue air, with the white
turrets all around me and, to my left, the eggshell dome of what was perhaps a temple. Beneath it, a window shone the colour of rose in the sudden sunlight, black-gapped where its panes had been
broken. The tower was sloping inwards now, narrowing. I looked back only once, checking that the demothea was still following me, and went on, waving a splay-fingered hand to Rubirosa circling
below and hoping that she’d understand what I wanted her to do. The Library was still present, her grim figure occasionally lost in the rainbow spray of mist as she drifted by.

I glanced up and saw that the top of the tower was visible: a sharp point bisecting the rainy skies. I’d have to make a decision soon, in any case – the air was freezing and I
didn’t want to take the risk of my numb hands slipping on cold iron and sending me to a watery death. So I stopped, as if winded, and let the demothea catch up.

I hoped it would work. I hoped Rubirosa had grasped my tentative plan. The orthocopter was now orbiting the tower in tight circles, some distance below, and I thought she’d understood what
I wanted her to do. If not – well, at least there would be the novelty of dying on Earth. The demothea was only a few feet below me now, pausing with its alien head on one side. I could see
the close-knit whorls and shells that covered its head, that from a distance gave the illusion of intricately coiffured hair. No way of knowing what purpose they served – radar? Telepathy? In
the rainswept light its eyes had an opalescent gleam. It was waiting for me to make the first move and I did. I brought the stun gun up abruptly and as I did so, the whip-tip flicked out. But
instead of trying to fire, I threw the gun off to one side. I’d planned that the demothea’s swift reactions would be her undoing. Instinctively, the whip followed the trajectory of the
gun and as it lashed away from me, I dived. I caught the demothea around the waist, grasping the root of the tentacular whip, which was under one arm, and kept it from striking back at me. The
demothea gave a whistling scream, more of surprise than fear, and we both hurtled down off the tower.

I have a confused memory of falling down through the rain, the wetness lacerating my face. The demothea’s body, clasped in my arms, was at once slippery and hard, with an unpleasant
yieldingness in certain places. It smelled strange, not distasteful, just odd, like chemicals. I caught sight of a pearly eye, rolling in the direction of my face, and then the orthocopter was
roaring overhead, blotting out the demothea’s scream, and the net whisked out around us. We shot upwards, the demothea struggling and fighting in earnest now that it found itself captured. I
hung on to it until we were over the lip of the hatch and onto the merciful hardness of the solid floor.

The kappa didn’t waste time on congratulations. She held a device to the side of the demothea’s lashing head and pressed. I felt the shock go through it and nearly blacked out, but
the demothea went limp. Shakily, I disentangled myself and got to my feet.

‘Well done,’ Rubirosa said from the pilot’s seat.

‘Wasn’t sure if you’d got the idea.’ My breath seemed to have gone. ‘Couldn’t have done it lower down. Not enough room.’

‘I damn nearly missed you,’ Rubirosa said, reprovingly. I didn’t want to think about that.

Well, you didn’t.’

Evishu was bending over the demothea, binding it securely. ‘I don’t want her breaking out again,’ she muttered. Then she straightened up and looked at me. Her round eyes were
expressionless, but she was smiling. ‘That was well done. You risked your life.’